And the only way for even "mindwiped" people to live the decor in the tower apartments is if they are mindwiped at least weekly.

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What do you mean? Too minimalistic?

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That is a courteous way to put it. The only functional furniture in the place was the bed. Even the computer screen was badly angled.

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They had a dining table and chairs, very simple and cafeteria like. Interesting contrast with Vic who is in a tailored dress and pearls and full make up with her hair done. All the time. In her house she lives in with no one else but her partner. I assumed while watching it that this was an expectation of the people she worked for. "Efficient".

I thought it interesting that she was so ready to turn Jack in at the end, seemingly prompted by jealousy. When we see the flashback to the original Vic and Jack she appears to possibly have a crush on him. The photo, the way she's irked he's going back to say goodbye to his wife.. it's a possibility, though maybe I read all that into it. Anyway if there is residual personality left that jealousy element may have been breaking through her clean slate just like Jack's curiosity and memories were breaking through his. And when Jack questions Vic if she recognizes his wife doesn't it seem she doesn't want to admit it?

I was excited for this project and I'm going to see it today. I saw some bad reviews but I've looked at what some people on my FB are saying who are industry professionals and they have been raving about it, so I'm excited again.

I saw the movie yesterday and REALLY enjoyed it. I didn't really know anything about it going in and was pleasantly surprised (particularly after seeing that it had gotten pretty much bad reviews). It is really nice to go to a theater and see some good sci-fi. I often wonder why for the most part sci-fi gets bad reviews. In any case, I highly recommend seeing it.

I've seen a few professional reviews that seemed off, like they were repeating from a script. That script is that Oblivion is totally derivative. This may seem plausible except that if you've seen Oblivion you haven't seen much of the movies it's supposedly ripping off.

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Then I guess you've missed a lot of movies, because this is one time the paid reviewers got it absolutely right. I lost count listing all the movies it cribbed from in my head. (And cartoons. That blown-up moon looked like they took it right from Thundarr the Barbarian.)

Doesn't mean it was a bad movie. A good science fiction story and decent acting all around.

I've seen a few professional reviews that seemed off, like they were repeating from a script. That script is that Oblivion is totally derivative. This may seem plausible except that if you've seen Oblivion you haven't seen much of the movies it's supposedly ripping off.

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Then I guess you've missed a lot of movies, because this is one time the paid reviewers got it absolutely right. I lost count listing all the movies it cribbed from in my head. (And cartoons. That blown-up moon looked like they took it right from Thundarr the Barbarian.)

Doesn't mean it was a bad movie. A good science fiction story and decent acting all around.

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Or the destroyed Moon might have come from The Time Machine remake. The ultimate source is probably Arthur Clarke. Whether a few seconds of scenery constitutes cribbing is another question. I don't think that the supposedly unique images being ripped off by Oblivion are quite as original as assumed.

Love Affair, An Affair to Remember and Sleepless in Seattle are by far the movies Oblivion stole most blatantly from. Yet I don't think anyone could sensibly argue that Oblivion's Empire State Building experience is old hat and stale for that reason.

Yet another question is, why single out Oblivion when most movies do exactly the same thing? A recent example is Olympus Is Fallen. I too was thinking of previous movies and lost track of bits of movies it reminded me of. There was no chorus of reviewers singing in chorus about that. Singling out Oblivion on this issue like complaining one pot in the kitchen is black, when most of the others are too. The amount of borrowing in movies is so large that there are numerous movies that have taken nothing from real life at all.

In the sense of actually addressing the movie, I must still maintain that the blather about ripping off other movies is at best misconceived. It misleads attention, for instance, from the weakness of the female characters, which is a genuine criticism. In that sense, the paid reviewers most certainly got it wrong.

As to whether Oblivion is a good SF movie? I suppose it depends upon what standard you want to choose. It forthrightly declares that people are who they are because of their experiences, their memories. Bad news for Alzheimer's patients! But is this something true about people? Part of assessing Oblivion as a work of art means deciding whether you agree. If you do, I suppose you might think Oblivion is profoundly insightful. The movie also says that a true love can't be eradicated from a memory, which I think we can all agree is unfortunately not true. Does this mean Oblivion is sentimental hokum?

Again, the thing is, whatever you think of Oblivion, is that tripe about ripping off other movies isn't a real review. Maybe people think that a favorable review of a Cruise movie is supporting Scientology against Christianity?

“Oblivion” has the ability to haunt you visually and, with an unanticipated love story, even emotionally. Written by Karl Gajdusek and Michael DeBruyn, this is a piece of futuristic fiction intended for adults, not their children, a film in which firefights and futuristic weapons feel more like afterthoughts than reasons for being.

Can anyone tell me where Jack got the second intact life pod at the end? I thought only one was salvagable?

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I would assume that their original international ship had enough pods for everyone on board. Since Jack and Victoria were in the command module their pods on the capsule would have been empty, and thus not destroyed by the drones when the capsule crashed to earth since the drones only attacked human occupied pods.

This was a pretty good movie. At first, I thought things rather cliched, set in the future where the main character is fixated on the time period in the past which coincidentally is the movie's release date (or near enough, in this case) and I totally had it figured out the "Scavs" were actually humans.

However, I was totally surprised where the story went prett much as soon as Jack Harper met the other version of himself. And when all is said and done, we even get a satisfactory explanation for why Harper is fixated with modern times.

Okay, but here's a though, are the various numbers assigned to the Harpers an indication of how many there are? Given the main one is 49 and the one he met up with is 52, does that mean there are at least 52? If so, what will happen to the other fifty? They can't all reunite with Julia and raise their daughter. Though I suppose there's no real reason why they can't continue their marriages with their respecitve Victorias.

I enjoyed the movie, but it's long and slow pacing probably won't warrant a re-watch. It was visually gorgeous and the soundtrack almost sounded like Tron Legacy (this is a good thing!). I just can't believe it took an entire hour before the story really kicked into gear.

Is it just me, or was the story basically The Matrix, with the visuals of the Portal game, with the ending of ID4 tacked on?

I thought it was OK, but I really felt it was so derivative, as if they took bits and pieces from several other good science fiction films, mixed them up and rearranged them into one screenplay.

I thought the actors were all very good and the visuals were stunning but I couldn't help thinking, "Wow, that reminds me of....

Wall-E, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, 2001, Moon, etc. And as soon as I heard that phrase,"Are you an effective team?" coupled with the information about the memory wipe, I turned to hubby and said, "They're clones or something,"

so the big reveal was a bit of a letdown.

I don't know what I was hoping for, but this just felt a bit hollow to me.